Building a Design System from Scratch

Two projects, two times delivering without a component system. Every tool I touched at the organisation had a different visual identity: the website had one set of colours, the app another, internal tools yet another. The only existing reference was a style guide from before the year 2000 — designed for print. Zero guidance for digital.

What started as a Lord of the Rings joke — one ring to rule them all — turned into a full design system built from tokens up, covering an internal tool, a website, an ecommerce platform and the mobile app. The development team is already working with the first version. Still in progress, but already changing how the organisation builds.